The Old Radio Ranch

***Note*** Originally written in the Fall of 2023 The creation of the Dam road and the clearing on the ridge of the hill to hold a future outbuilding presented a natural island of trees maybe 30 feet across and 40 feet long. There is a depression in the middle of this grove and the tradesmen that built the house tossed some materials into this depression. I sprayed the area a few months back with a glysophate mix to kill out the briars and small trees. Most of the intended foliage has turned a crispy brown. The briars die but don’t...

I haven’t been active on this site since April of last year. Many things happening but not many come to a complete resolution. Was working on image compression. I had been compressing the images before loading to the site. Discovered there was some compression happening when loading the images to the site library in WordPress. Also found a plug-in that will optimize the images by further compression. It used to be a big deal but with disk space so available these days, this issue isn’t so important. A quick look back to see where it started in 2016 and forward...

I had signed up on a wait list for Starlink Satellite after I was having less than acceptable results trying to stream over the AT&T cellular antenna I’ve used for several years now. I ditched DirecTV last year and muddled along using a Fire TV Cube and over the air content. The AT&T internet connection was OK for e-mail and most browsing but just didn’t have the bandwidth available to handle entertainment streaming and it was often inoperable during peak cell phone usage hours when my neighbors were using the same cell tower I was attempting to use. Never heard...

Was taken with the change of colors on the far side of the pond this year as it was the first time I had a clear view. Decided to attempt to capture the change of seasons with a once a day photo from the same general vantage point. In less than a month, the leaves had changed and fallen. Of course, the pictures don’t do the actual view justice. Much work remains to clear the close bank of stumps and brush and then get some low growing ground cover established. Hoping I’m up for it.

I have long wanted a small tractor with a loader bucket and backhoe attachment to allow me a bit more “muscle” when attempting to tackle some of my less ambitious terraforming initiatives around the property. When the most severe part of the main rocked driveway started washing out with some regularity, it seemed the perfect time to sell a little stock and jump into tractor ownership. I visited my local Equipment Supply over the river in Cannelton and made a deal on the Massey Ferguson CG1725M. The transaction was delayed over a weekend while waiting for the funds transfer to...

For the last few years at Christmas, I’ve dressed up a scrub conifer that resides on one of the two rock outcroppings adjacent the highway with a string of twinkle lights. The solar powered twinkle lights were OK but didn’t last that long into the evening and they really weren’t that obvious unless you were looking for them. Was a pain for the old guy here to try and string the lights around the tree on a fairly severe slant. Taking them down inetivibly ended in their destruction. Decided there were better options but I wasn’t sure which direction to...

The bad weather has given me the opportunity to add another project that has been completed. I had taken a bunch of pictures during the flagpole installation but deleted the pictures from the phone thinking I had transferred them to my normal picture folders on my Local Net. Hardest part of the project was digging the 16 inch across by 28 inch deep hole for the concrete base using a post hole digger. They boys dig holes to chase moles but I couldn’t get them interested in helping. Aluminum pole is telescoping and easy to raise and lower when using...

Now, who else has an A/V Rack in their pantry? Probably more people than I could imagine but a centralized A/V closet was a feature that I thought I wanted in the new home. I had one shot at running the multiple cables from the pantry area to all the locations in the house between the time the interior walls went up and before insulation and sheetrock went up. Builder was completely uncooperative about this because he didn’t understand it and didn’t want to know anything about it. Got all of the orange low voltage boxes installed and ran all...

It’s gotten down in the teens after we first received the freezing rain that coated everything with ice. No trees down that I’ve seen from the weight of the ice. This is the first time the pond has frozen. Was surprised to see it frozen because I had thought the ground temperature and water volume might prevent it. Didn’t try my weight on the ice this time – ha. Had to keep Chunk from trying to go to the ice – he’s so used to getting a drink and a dip. We are waiting for the bulk of the bad...